How MADE Art Boutique signified the rejuvenation of Roosevelt Row and why it closed after 20 years

After 20 years of selling work by local artists on Roosevelt Row, MADE Art Boutique shut its doors last week. When it first opened at the corner of East Roosevelt Street and North Fifth Street, there wasn’t much like it in downtown Phoenix.

But over the years, it came to signify the rejuvenation of the neighborhood — a place for creativity and community building, even as the surrounding area exploded with luxury apartment buildings, hotels and restaurants.

MADE was the brainchild of Cindy Dach, who’s been a fixture in the city’s arts community for decades. She’s also the co-owner of Changing Hands Bookstore, and a writer and artist in her own right. Dach sat down with The Show to talk about MADE's legacy.

Full conversation

SAM DINGMAN: Cindy, good morning.

CINDY DACH: Good morning.

DINGMAN: So, Cindy, you said this thing to me once that I wanted to start out by asking you about. Which is that as a writer yourself, you, early in your career, were kind of picturing the prospect of writing a book, and it felt very isolating to you.

Is part of the reason that you wanted to start this project as a way to, kind of, counteract the isolation that artists feel when they're in their process?

DACH: Absolutely. Writers do spend a lot of time by themselves. And when I was living in Colorado, I became part of a visual arts community by just attending galleries and I found this connection between artists that I didn't see in my own life.

So as I got involved with Roosevelt Row and Eye Lounge, it was without that, you know, we become better by being around people who challenge us. And that's what arts communities do.

DINGMAN: Yeah. Yeah. So for folks like me who are somewhat recent transplants and think of Roosevelt Row as a fixture, take us back in time to 20 years ago. Like, what did Roosevelt Road look like? 

DACH: Absolutely. At that time, it was just filled with vacant spaces because in the '70s, so many buildings had been torn down for development. That did not happen. A visiting architect from Italy described Roosevelt Row as a place with many missing teeth. And you would walk and it would just be dirt lot, dirt lot, dirt lot.

And then there was a few historic bungalows that a community of artists and residents were able to preserve and save because they were slotted to be bulldozed for a Cardinal Stadium. But we were able to fight City Hall. And so there was these bungalows. But there were days, you know, as especially over the past 20 years where they would come in to pave the road or make accessible sidewalks and I would have zero dollar days because nobody could get to me. And across the street from me was two vacant lots.

DINGMAN: Wow. Wow. Well, talk a little bit more about those early days in terms of the community. Like what was the interaction like with artists? How did you start to begin cultivating this as a destination, even if it was, as you were saying, sort of hard to reach. 

DACH: You know, there was this great fortune that Roosevelt Row is one mile from City Hall and less than a mile from Hance Park. And the sports arenas came south of us. So to get to these other places, you had to go through us. And there were vacant spaces that landlords owned that basically said, if you don't mind the hole in the roof or if you don't mind that I don't have AC, you can have it as an art space. So we just immediately connected, and it was this preservation and honor of each other, of this community that we were a part of And the building that we just kept. Everybody wanted to be there to see each other, to be part — you got to be part of something. The big cities on the East Coast, it's hard to get on that ground floor.

DINGMAN: Well, I have to imagine you're working with artists, right? So, in addition to wanting to have a place to sell their stuff, this is also a community of makers. And if there's a chance to help make the space where the art is on offer, I could see that being very appealing.

DACH: There was opportunities for artists to meet each other, because maybe there would be an opening where they would just bump into each other. And that's with these brick and mortar spaces are essential because we have to bump into each other. We have to be surprised by humans, both good and bad. And these spaces created that. And I watched many opportunities of collaboration come out of those mere bump-ins.

DINGMAN: I don't want to pass by this, this thing you were just mentioning, which seems really important to me, and a critical difference between Roosevelt Row and places like it in other cities, which is that it is on this main artery of downtown Phoenix. You kind of can't move through the center of the city without going through Roosevelt Row. It's not like I'm thinking of the place I used to live, New York City, where Williamsburg is a major arts hub, but it's literally on the other side of the river, and you could live your whole life in New York and not go there. That's not true of Roosevelt Row. How significant has that been?

DACH: It was, in a way, a great fortune. You know, when we first got down there, there was this plan from the city Of Phoenix called the Sunburst Plan. And after a concert or a big game, it was how you moved people out. And Roosevelt Street was an artery for moving people out quickly. And we were a group of artists. And then they're saying, no, please stop, please slow down your car and come to this boutique and come to this restaurant that's owned by a local person. But it also allowed us to thrive because we could slow down the traffic and we could get people to stop. It was hard to avoid our street.

DINGMAN: What do you make of what Roosevelt Row has become? I mean, the version of it that you and I are talking about, not to overuse this word, but it's going to be so unrecognizable to people who have not lived here for very long. And now it's so, in my mind, inseparable from the cultural life of Phoenix. What do you make of the ways that it has developed? And what do you hope to see going forward, even if MADE, itself, isn't going to be part of that?

DACH: You know, Roosevelt Row, right? It's a mashup. It's a mashup of the artists who were able to perhaps purchase their own buildings, artists who had visions and private development that came in. And in Arizona, there's not much you can do around private developers.

So it is this mashup. But Roosevelt Row is a place that only got there — we reached out to the city saying, we want to be part of this discussion. And it was like, you know, there's no seats at the table for you. And we had amazing leadership at City Hall at the time that said, you know what? We could add more chairs to the table.

DINGMAN: Wow.

DACH: And it's a place that people come and say, I want to be part of the future. So what Roosevelt Row will become will be the vision of those who choose to sit at those tables.

DINGMAN: Yeah. For you, you know, we started out this conversation talking about where you kind of were in your own artistic career at the beginning of this. Why step away now? What's prompting that? 

DACH: You know, it's life, right? So I've always had a lot on my plate between Changing Hands, between my personal life, between making art, between MADE, and at times, I felt that I haven't been as present in each of those things because there's so many things. And as I get older, I want to be more present in each thing.

Family issues are coming up. I've got an aging family member that I am much more involved with than I've ever been in, and I, I want to be present, you know? I don't want to be in another doctor's appointment with my mother getting a text that I'm out of shopping bags and the Wi-Fi went out.

DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah.

DACH: So it's really about making space and having the opportunity to take something else on.

DINGMAN: Well, Cindy Dach is one of the founders of MADE Art Boutique, shutting down after 20 amazing years. Cindy, thank you so much. 

DACH: Thanks for having me.